Rushing Hin&Her in a Hurry (or To and Fro)

It’s difficult for us country folk to understand why so many people need to commute between San Francisco and Los Angeles at speeds of 240 mph on a bullet train system costing nearly 100 billion dollars. Are their skills and time really all that valuable?

There is also a current cost/benefit analysis of commuting by rail between Brighton and Ann Arbor. Anyone forced to deal with traffic congestion on U.S. 23 during prime commuting time would likely welcome a happier solution to the problem.

I’m surprised there isn’t already a small fleet of double-decker buses snatching people out of their neighborhoods every morning and returning them safely home every evening. The problem, of course, revolves around the scattered distribution of the population at one end of the trip, and a lack of clearly concentrated centers of employment at the other end. This is not New York City.

Commuting by rail in this part of Michigan would be nothing new if it could be made workable. The history of rail transportation hereabouts reveals a ghostly web work of railroad routes all the way from Port Huron to Jackson with plenty of little sidetracks poked in the direction of Pontiac and Lansing. Why that all disappeared is an interesting part of our history.

As a young lad about ten years old, I recall seeing rails popping out of the sun-baked asphalt paving on Riverside Drive in St. Clair, Michigan on a hot August afternoon. That was sometime in the 1940s. At the time, no one seemed able to offer an explanation for the source and origin of those rails. Many things are forgotten in the swift passage of time. But I never forgot the sight of those rising rails.

Many years later, I had frequent occasion to visit an elderly gentleman confined to his home in the care of a maiden niece who called him “Uncle Bill.” He finally solved the problem of the rising rails for me. Uncle Bill told me many stories about his work as a motorman on the Port Huron to Jackson Interurban back in the 1920s.

In older times, Port Huron boasted attachment to the DUR (Detroit Urban Railway) and the PH&D, which locals still refer to as the “Puff Hard and Dolittle.” Few people realize it was possible to board an electric streetcar in Port Huron and ride round-trip all the way through Detroit to Jackson. That service began around 1902 and lasted until about 1922. There are clear reasons for the demise of such systems.

There has been extensive evolution of transportation in the past century. The horse-and-buggy worked for a long time as the sole choice, unless you were willing to ride shank’s mare. In the late 1800s, rail transportation rapidly replaced the horse-and-buggy for longer distance travel. But flourishing automobile options trumped rail service in the early 1920s.

There can be no doubt about the inadequacy of U.S. 23 to handle traffic between Brighton and Ann Arbor during certain periods each weekday. Even weekends turn bad when local college football teams are all playing home games

Frankly, it might have been wiser to tone down that elaborate new interchange rising up between I-96 and U.S. 23. Part of the millions spent there could have been used to widen U.S. 23 all the way from Brighton to Saline. But even that solution might eventually prove inadequate. The evolution of travel proves we like to get exactly where we’re going in the fastest way possible.

There is truly something charming about discovering a railroad track out in the country and asking: “Hey! What use could we make of this?” But the heart of any transportation problem lies in the concentration of population and jobs at various origins and destinations.

Some may recall a proposal made by the Kohlrabi Grower’s Association about erecting an enormous commercial and residential tower in Lucy Park astride the intersection of two important rail lines southeast of Howell. The tower would provide both job space and residential accommodations. Workers and residents in the tower would enjoy convenient rail service from all over southern Michigan, arriving and departing right beneath their feet.

Maybe the Kohlrabi Grower’s proposal can be discounted as a joke. But if rails are to be a solution, you cannot escape the need for a reasonable concentration of both housing and jobs tightly packed around the rail terminals the way it happens in major metropolitan centers.

If you must drive your car to catch a train, and then transfer to another car at the end of the line to drive the rest of the way to work, then the most attractive solution is simply to remain in your car for the entire trip, despite the crush of commuter traffic.

The Kohlrabi Grower’s proposal intended to depict the concentration needed to justify commuter transportation. But mention of a tower also served to remind readers about an abandoned rail station in southwest Detroit. The windowless skeleton of the old Michigan Central Terminal was once part of a booming network of rail transportation. The poor old building now sits worse than idle along the tracks.

There are no easy answers here. Some still speculate on the first wreck of a 240-mph bullet train in California.

Carl Welser is a reverend, a former firefighter with the Hamburg Fire Department and a regular columnist in the Livingston Daily. You can send email to him at ccwelser@yahoo.com.